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Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Cameroon’s Lower House of Parliament: Is the Politics of Politics More Than Politics?

By Tanyi-Mbianyor Samuel Tabi*

Barrister Tanyi-Mbianyor Samuel Tabi,

Tuesday October 29th
2013 was the opening of the 9th legislative season in Cameroon. In
an inaugural speech, former Governor Enoh Tanjong sitting in for Speaker of the
House (in his capacity as the oldest member as there had not been elections for
the position of Speaker yet), told his colleagues, members of parliament that
they should not mistake their immunity for impunity. And that those who do not
respect this, should be ready to face the music.

Whether it is possible to make
them face the music or not, given the present dispensation, remains a matter of
wide controversial speculation, so we shall concern here only about the fact that
the statement was mentioned.

When one considers the fact that the duty of
parliamentarians is to legislate laws, one starts wondering about how relevant
it was for Honourable Enoh Tanjong to have mentioned this statement to his
colleagues. One would expect that someone with authority over others in a given
agency, be it governmental or private, would be in a place to use impunity when
dealing with his/her subordinates and not an MP whose constituency does not
work directly under them per se.

In proper democratic
systems, one would expect that leaders do not emerge by accident. They have
pedigree. They are cut and cultivated. They capture the imagination of the
people by the way they articulate the problems facing them and seeking means of
resolving such problems and difficulties. When the people cry, their leaders
feel the pain and seek for means to soothe the hurt and alleviate the pain. Objective
minds would agree that what happens in Cameroon does not in any way resemble
this.

Out of the 180 members
that make up the Lower House of the Assembly, the CPDM alone has 148, leaving
the SDF, NUDP, UDC and the CDU to share the remaining 30 seats. In selecting
candidates to run for these elections, the CPDM used so-called investiture
committees. The duty of these committees was to go to the field and give the
electorate the lists of candidates for them to vote on the day of the elections.
These lists were already drawn by party hierarchy, without consultation with the
grassroots and the latter were merely informed about the decision. There were
no primaries. This means that 7/8th of our Lower House of parliament
was not democratically elected (within their party) in the first place. In real estate language, there is something
known as the root of tittle. If you are selling the property to a purchaser,
bring the document which proves that you have good title so as to be able to
pass on a good title. Conversely put, if CPDM candidates for election to the
parliament were not democratically elected within their party to be able to
run, how democratic can such be to the members of that political party? Is the
politics of politics more than politics?

While commenting on the
conduct of the elections, Professor T. Assonganyi ,a noted Cameroonian socio-political critic and election observer, said that the just ended
elections was a sham because no matter how well things are done, the way
institutions and some laws are currentlystructured in Cameroon, any elections would still leave the CPDM
carrying the majority. The present dispensation has a rigging machinery planted
from the very inception of the election process. ITEM: The electoral body,
ELECAM is appointed by the head of State, it is not elected by the people.
Prominent members of ELECAM were members of the Central Committee of the CPDM
before their appointment into the election organizing body. In order to keep
this very lucrative appointment, they had to resign from the CPDM, at least by
announcing they did so. Question: where will they pay their allegiance lie? Is it to the
person who appointed them or to the Cameroonian people? Our take is whether with
the present dispensation, anyone can really take us seriously as a nation that
is interested in democratizing its institutions. Wither our so called advanced
democracy? Truth remains that the last legislative and municipal elections in
Cameroon were without issues because the rigging machinery has well been
implanted into the Cameroon polity. It has tap roots not fibrous roots.

The manner in which 7/8th
of our members of the Lower House of Parliament came to power was dictatorial.
No doubt ,there was and still is plenty of discontent and bitterness amongst
those who think they should have had a chance to run through the primaries so
as to be sure that the electorate would or would not have wanted them to run. Enoh
Tanjong had these disgruntled Cameroonians in mind. He was right to warn his
colleagues against victimization. What usually happens is that in most cases,
the less popular and less competent persons are imposed upon the peoples’ true
choice. With power in their hands now as MPs, these unpopular ones clamp down
on the real popular citizens in a bit to impose their authority.

Of recent, the Cameroon
political story has been a sad and sorry tale. What the leaders have going for
them is the resilience of Cameroonians and their undying spirit, now obviously
stretched out to the limits. Some things can only last for some times, not all
times.

What we deserve is a crop
of leaders endowed with the gift of steady application, imbued with the ability
to control events rather than drift with the tides. Our leaders should be men
and women whose range of vision and depth of conception, towers above their
contemporaries. Such people abound in their numbers in Cameroon but are choked
by warped and corrupt recruitment processes, the real albatross of this country.
Something after all is wrong with a process that makes a few persons, in certain
offices or with some doggy connections, see it as their exclusive right to
nominate people for appointment or elections to all offices of the land.
Elections in Cameroon today are by appointment. When a political party for
example, wins a council, the government appoints a Government Delegate to laud
over the elected Mayor.

Of course the overriding
consideration to these power-mongers is the political patronage which this portends.
It is often an opportunity to nominate only those who are rabidly loyal and
subservient to them regardless of their suitability for the office. The primary
mandate of such a nominee is to feather the nest of his patron to whom he is
beholden and who he perceives as his godfather. More often than not, such
appointees are mere mediocres, clueless and bereft of the basic knowledge of
what it takes to be in that given office. They are often inept and ill-equipped
for the arduous task of nation building. The nation undoubtedly gets a raw deal
when the wrong people get into offices. Even if the ages (most of them are more
than 70 years old), of most of the members of both houses of parliament does
not matter, what about the ages of their ideas?

Cameroonians expect from
legislators, men and women who will directly impact on their lives and conditions.
For many years now, life for the ordinary citizen has been generally difficult,
compounded by ravaging poverty and ever increasing despondency. Cameroonians
are in dire need of life-changing policies. They look endlessly to their
representatives both the ones they elected and the ones imposed on them not
just to legislate happiness, prosperity and life more abundant into Cameroon,
but also to reflect their moods and circumstances in carriage and comportment.
If they would be true representatives of the people, sobriety would be palpable
in their conduct to reflect the mood of a people in despair, bogged down by
poverty, unemployment, disease and want.

One does not need to be a
rocket scientist to notice that Cameroon is ailing. Although those at the helm
of affairs find this a bitter pill to swallow, the problem with our country is
inextricably linked to the poor quality of leadership it is plagued with.
Little wonder the nation’s fortune has continued to plummet just as she
diminishes in stature and integrity.

Of course the dearth of
quality leadership cannot be divorced from the poor recruitment processes in
place. The poor choices at pools, if choices have ever been truly permitted,
are the election of wrong persons into public offices. These people in turn, of
course appoint wrong persons as aides. No country, after all, can rise above the
level of its work force, especially at the decision-making or leadership level,
hence the sorry state of our nation. Pity.

*Tanyi-Mbianyor Samuel
Tabiis a Cameroonian legal practitioner.He read law in the
Universities of Yaounde and Toronto.He
is presently completing a Masters Degree in Public Administration at Walden
University in Minneapolis Minnesota.